On the 25th of February, the USS George Washington pulled into Pier 4 at Hoboken, New Jersey. On board were the Wilson entourage and 2,294 returning soldiers. Thus the homecoming was doubly festive, with a grand band from nearby Camp Merritt, a cheering throng of workers from the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, and the YMCA, and an abundance of cakes, coffee, cigarettes, and candies. In the rush of excitement, the president left a pair of tortoiseshell spectacles in his stateroom. The ship’s chief water tender, L. O. Jones, was given the special mission of personally carrying the president’s eyeglasses to Washington with the instructions: “The President appears to value these glasses highly, so take care of them. Wrap them first in cotton, then a layer of excelsior, and put a round turn and two half hitches of stout spun yarn, and I guess that will hold them all right until you get to the White House tomorrow forenoon.”
By the time Wilson had been reunited with his spectacles on the 26th, he had signed a new revenue bill calling for Americans to pay a “victory tax” annually to meet the war debt, which the Treasury Department said would amount to $1.2 billion a year for twenty-five years. He had announced his support for licensing civilians to fly airplanes. And he had agreed to march in a parade the next day for three thousand returning soldiers in the District of Columbia. That night, he dined at the White House with the members of the Senate and House committees on foreign affairs with the explicit purpose of going over the draft of the League Covenant.
From Paris, Wilson had urged each of the invitees to hold back from any debates over the League until that night. Senator Borah refused to attend the dinner, announcing that there was nothing Wilson could do or say to convince him to favor the League. Senator Albert B. Fall, another opponent, also declined the invitation. And if Wilson didn’t know it in Paris, he would find out now: the debate over the League had already begun.
Senator James Reed’s stand on the issue of the League’s violating the U.S. Constitution, for example, was already being contested by one of the League’s strongest Republican supporters, former U.S. president William Howard Taft. “Most of the men who are sitting up with the Constitution to defeat the League are men whom I would not trust overnight,” Taft told the New York Times that February.
Although Lodge was angry at the president for landing in Boston harbor instead of New York, he nonetheless attended the dinner. In a letter to Henry White in Paris, shortly before Wilson’s arrival in Boston, Lodge wrote, “I accepted the invitation to the dinner. I should not have thought to do otherwise. I also felt, as a gentleman and man of honor, that having accepted the invitation to dinner I should comply with his request not to discuss the terms of the League as set forth in the draft of the committee, until after the dinner. The President, however, does not seem to look at it in the same way, and is going to land in Boston, my own city, and there address a great mass meeting which is all arranged for while I am reduced to silence because I wish to observe what I think is required of an honorable man.”
After dinner, Lodge escorted Mrs. Wilson from the table and the thirty-six guests adjourned to the East Room, where Wilson calmly responded to two hours of cross-examination about the Covenant. A major point of contention was the fact that so much time at the conference had been consumed by the League. Little progress on the terms of peace with Germany would not please the American public, which wanted the complete return of the soldiers as soon as possible. And that could not happen until Germany signed the treaty. At the close of the evening, the lines were clearly drawn. The guns were loaded. And each side was taking aim.
The next day Senator Philander Chase Knox, a Republican from Pennsylvania, called the League “a betrayal of the people.” A few days after that, thirty-nine Republican senators and senators-elect—enough to block ratification—signed a resolution stating that it was the Senate’s wish that only after the peace treaty was completed should the League be considered and that the draft of the Covenant, as Wilson had presented it that week, should be rejected. Shortly after midnight on March 3, Lodge read the resolution out loud to the Senate, knowing that the Senate’s objections to the League would be on file in the Congressional Record and that it would be chronicled in the press.
Wilson fought back. On March 4, Wilson and Taft linked arms on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera in New York while Enrico Caruso sang “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Wilson told the approximately five thousand people in the audience that when the treaty was done the Covenant of the League would most definitely be part of it, for “you cannot dissect the Covenant from the Treaty without destroying the whole vital structure.” Guided by the shining light of his idealism, Wilson could see only his own path to peace. Like all idealists, he adjusted his blinders and charged ahead.
But for America, the blinders were a problem. As the president of a country facing the aftermath of a world war—and of a flu pandemic—he should have had a broader vision. While Wilson was working on a scheme for the reconstruction of the world, America also needed a reconstruction plan. And although expectations for a better world were still high among his countrymen, the realities of war’s aftermath were lowering the threshold of hope. Nine days of presidential incantations to make everything right were simply not enough.
Wilson’s nation was tilting off balance, dizzy from the onslaught of so many unsettling events and demanding issues. For example, thousands upon thousands of returning soldiers needed jobs at a time when the government was canceling wartime contracts, which caused companies to reduce their workforces for peacetime markets and to shut down factories. Labor strikes were hitting industrial America daily, drawing attention to low wages and long hours, the diminishing numbers of jobs and the rising cost of living.
At the same time, there was the fast-spreading fear of Bolshevism. There was the menacing indifference of white America to the injustices in black America—all pressing insistently for solutions. There were the crusaders for civil liberties who wanted Wilson to grant amnesty to the thousands of Americans indicted for obstructing the laws of wartime America, such as the Espionage Act and the Selective Service Act. And there were the suffragists who continued to blame Wilson for their inability to persuade the Senate to pass their constitutional amendment—the most recent defeat occurring two weeks before his return from France—and who demonstrated their anger when sixty-five of them burned Wilson in effigy in front of the White House on February 9.
In addition, several congressmen were accusing Wilson’s postmaster general, Albert Burleson, of stretching his authority for the purpose of muzzling the press. They loudly urged Wilson to repeal the rigorous mail censorship that had existed during the war. There was too much concern, they said, about suppressing dissidents and identifying new enemies and not enough about securing a scheme for reconstructing postwar America.
Even the flu was back, in a third wave. The first wave, in the spring of 1918, was mild in comparison with the overwhelming second wave, which struck in the autumn that year and evoked comparisons with the Black Death of the fourteenth century. There had been the false hope around the time of the Armistice that the epidemic was over, and in some cities health curfews had been canceled, lifting restrictions on large public gatherings for the Armistice Day celebrations. But the pandemic hardly ended in November 1918. In December, as contaminated soldiers returned to America in the cramped quarters of ships, the third wave began. By January, the gauze masks, the bans on public gatherings, the daily reports of casualties had returned as the westward-bound troopships brought home the soldiers and the disease. Whether the new wave would break the record for devastation and horror that the second wave had established, or constitute a less intense resurgence, no one knew. In the winter months, it did not look good. In the last week of January, for example, more than a thousand people died of flu and pneumonia in New York City, a tally increasing weekly. And on February 26, the transport Leviathan pushed off from Brest with thousands of soldiers, including some who were severely coughing as the ship left port. At least two hundred developed the flu on board and seventeen died at sea or after arriving at Hoboken.
The loose ends of wartime were dangling everywhere, demanding decisions and action. What, for example, should Wilson do about Daylight Savings Time? The government had established it during the war to save fuel. Now that the war was over, there was a movement to end it. While Wilson was back, a U.S. senator from Oklahoma, Thomas Pryor Gore, called for the repeal of the Daylight Savings Act in the form of a rider added to the Agricultural Appropriations bill. He claimed that the need for repeal was put forth by farmers, who believed that the law had damaged their livelihood. On Gore’s side were the utility companies, which would lose money if Daylight Savings continued. One group claimed that the act had saved the nation at least $8 million in gas and electric lights and one million tons of coal, which translated into huge losses in profits for the utility companies.
Fighting the repeal and wanting to keep Daylight Savings were Senator William Calder of New York, who had invented the concept; the acting mayor of New York City, Robert L. Moran; the Playground and Recreation Association of America, the U.S. National Lawn Tennis Association, golfers, baseball players, and sportsmen generally, who claimed that that extra hour of sunlight benefited them; the California State Fish Exchange; all labor organizations; and many merchants associations, which declared that their employees benefited because at the end of the day they had some daylight for playing sports. Although a war measure, Daylight Savings continued to save Americans money, so said those against repeal. That was a group that included the president, who believed that to lose it would be an “inconvenience and an economic loss.” The burgeoning auto industry got into the act, opposing the repeal because the extra hour of sunlight meant that men could take their families for a drive after work and before night. (Not all cars had headlights yet.)
Editorials lambasted the farmers for being selfish when most of America wanted to keep the new system. The head of the National Daylight Savings Association said it wasn’t really the farmers stirring up trouble. It was the large gas companies urging legislators to end a system that had saved consumers money but had hurt corporate profits. Farmers then spoke up and said that was right, that they really weren’t concerned as much as the press had depicted them. They could use that first hour in the morning for general chores and save the real farm work for the hours after the sun came up. Just in case the repeal failed, one company claimed it was trying to design a wristwatch that half the year would speed up and the other half slow down so that the time changes in the spring and autumn would not affect the human rhythm as much as the critics claimed it did.
Far more pressing than the Daylight Savings question was the persistent problem of what to do about Russia and the Bolsheviks. Despite Secretary of War Baker’s announcement on February 17 that the government intended to withdraw the American troops from Russia, the issue continued to trouble the friends and families of the Americans still there. There was no date set yet for their withdrawal and the news from Russia was disturbing. During Wilson’s February visit home, one infantryman from Michigan’s 339th who had returned to America from Archangel with severe arthritis spoke extensively to the press. He described coldness that pushed through him with the sharpness of knives and said that for weeks he had worn wet clothing in subzero temperatures. Having lost several frost bitten toes, he was now unable to walk. He said that the American soldiers wanted to come home. Some were even beginning to refuse to fight. They did not understand why they were there, he said.
At the Overman hearings in the Senate, which had resumed on February 11, the government was calling witnesses, all of them former or current government officials who described heinous scenes in which Bolsheviks committed unconscionable atrocities. The Bolsheviks had caused indescribable chaos in Russia, said the witnesses. One man who had spent time in Petrograd testified that many of Russia’s misfortunes were due to the influx of Jewish agitators from New York’s Lower East Side.
“How would you describe these Bolshevik forces so that the average man would understand them and their composition?” a senator asked one witness.
“Like a mob of Captain Kidds with the exception that they operated by land instead of on the water,” the witness responded.
Another witness claimed with the utmost certainty that there were at least three million people in America, mostly of Russian origin, who were Bolshevik sympathizers, and among those, many were spies. And, he added, Wilson seemed to be doing nothing about it. Yet another described the free love policy in Russia: all girls and boys upon reaching the age of eighteen become property of the State and must register at the Bureau of Free Love, which orchestrates forced, arranged matches once a month out of which come children who will then be government property. “Everything that makes life decent and worth living is in jeopardy if this thing called Bolshevism is allowed to go ahead,” testified a former U.S. Department of Commerce employee in Russia.
These stories were not corroborated by the Quakers and others who worked for social agencies that assisted the Russian people after the Revolution. Some journalists too decried the dark testimonies of the former consular officials and diplomats. Among them were Louise Bryant and her husband, John Reed. Bolshevism was not something they would recommend in America, unless of course the majority of Americans wanted it, but there was no reason to lie about what was happening in Russia. Bryant, who had written for the Philadelphia Public Ledger and for Cosmopolitan magazine, among other publications, said that the Russians she knew were excited about the experiment of Bolshevism and that they were fine idealists. She and others said that the Russians were not planning a takeover of America, that in fact they didn’t want our system of government. They did not wish, she said, “an East Side or a Fifth Avenue like there is in New York or a West End as in London.”
When Reed was asked whether he was in favor of a revolution like Russia’s for America, he said, “I have always advocated a Revolution in the United States.” When asked the question a second time, he added, “Revolution does not necessarily mean a revolution by force. By revolution I mean profound social change.”
Bessie Beatty, editor of McCall’s magazine, said that she was in Russia from June 1917 through January 1918. Beatty was not in favor of Bolshevism in America but believed it would improve conditions in Russia.
“Miss Beatty, do I understand your position to be that the majority of the Russians want the Bolsheviki and that therefore they should be permitted to have it?” asked a senator.
“Yes, that is my position.”
“We have had men of the highest character before this committee. Some of those men were in Russian jails and they testified that they saw men tortured and led forth to execution without the formality of trial and without knowledge of the charge against them. Do you discredit the testimony of those witnesses?”
“No I do not,” she said.
“Are you directly or indirectly connected with Bolshevist propaganda in this country?”
“No I am not.”
“Well, was it your purpose in appearing before this committee to defend and justify Bolshevism?”
“No. All I want is for the Allies to withdraw their troops from Russia and let the Russians work out their own problems without outside interference,” said Beatty.
Journalist William Allen White also told the world that February to leave the Russians alone. “If the Bolsheviki had got something worth while to develop in the form of government they ought to have the opportunity to do it without interference. If they have not got anything, they’ll go on the rocks soon enough.”
And Ray Stannard Baker, who saw similarities between Wilson and Lenin—both embarking on bold experiments for which the world might not be ready—wrote in his journal that February: “Sometimes, as during the other evening when I talked with Raymond Robins about Russia, I find myself looking into a vast chasm of wonder, with the solid earth a-tremble under my feet. What if Lenin and those despised Bolsheviks had the creative secret of a new world, and we—we serious and important ones—were merely trying to patch the fragments of the old?”
Before leaving again for France, Wilson appointed a new attorney general, A. Mitchell Palmer, a Democrat from Pennsylvania who had strong aspirations to run in the 1920 presidential race. Palmer was a Quaker but his firmest convictions at the moment centered on Bolshevism and political ambition. Bolsheviks were fouling the air in America, Palmer claimed. The scent was the strongest in immigrant communities. And in the name of national security, as the new chief law officer of the Department of Justice, he would try to exterminate the Bolshevik menace—in a very big and memorable way.
Until March, Palmer had served his country as the alien property custodian, which meant that he was responsible for seizing, managing, and selling companies and personal property owned by Germans in America as a defense against the use of such assets to aid America’s enemies. As recently as late January 1919, for example, Palmer had engaged the Anderson Galleries in New York to auction such items as an eight-piece set of Louis XVI furniture, a rosewood table of the Louis XV period, a set of six English eighteenth-century Chippendale chairs, and more, bringing in nearly $50,000. During the war his department had managed the seizure of nearly $1 billion in property and assets from forty thousand estates or trusts owned by Germans in America. This was an appointed position that came out of the wartime Trading with the Enemy Act of 1917 and the appointment, coming from Wilson in October 1917, was likely in return for Palmer’s hard work in campaigning for Wilson. In 1912, Palmer had been the vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and after Wilson’s victory he was offered the post of secretary of war. In a letter dated February 24, 1913, Palmer declined, saying that he was a Quaker and that the nation “requires not a man of peace for a war secretary, but one who can think war.” He was then offered a judgeship in the U.S. Court of Claims, which he accepted and where he had remained for more than four years.
Wilson’s latest plan for Palmer, however, seemed a bit shaky. In fact, the new Republican Congress would not confirm Wilson’s appointment of Palmer as the new attorney general, amid accusations that the alien property custodian had used his post to facilitate the transfer of some valuable German properties to high-level Democrats. Some of his critics also complained that he had favored Democrats for jobs within his jurisdiction and for high salaries. Although Palmer’s work had been appreciated as necessary and adequate during the war, it was now somewhat controversial. His admirers claimed he had captured the “German industrial army” in America. His foes called him the “official American pickpocket.” He denied the charges and beseeched the Senate Judiciary Committee to commence, as it wished to do, a thorough investigation of his duties in his previous post. On March 4, Thomas W. Gregory, the attorney general since 1914, resigned and Palmer, though not confirmed, nonetheless assumed the post as an “incumbent de gracia,” as the Christian Science Monitor called it. The debate over his confirmation would resume in June.
On March 5, a cool, misty day on the East Coast, the president, first lady, Ray Stannard Baker, and others returned to Boston harbor to sail back to France. At the Senate that morning the Agriculture Appropriations bill with the Daylight Savings rider was defeated, thus keeping Daylight Savings intact. Also in the morning, at a meeting of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sergeant Henry Johnson urged legislators to “take care of the boys who did their bit in the war” by passing a bill that would give veterans preference in civil service appointments and promotions. The press that day was abuzz with a decision out of the U.S. Supreme Court in which Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., claimed that the constitutional right of freedom of speech could be abridged if there were circumstances, such as war, that represented a “clear and present danger” to the nation. And William Monroe Trotter, who had just obtained his seaman’s permit under the name William Trotter, revealed to his friends a new plan: he would learn to cook and then find a job in the galley of a ship bound for France. Trotter was still so focused on getting to Paris, where he hoped he could bring world attention to “real democracy,” that he had not even tried to arrange a meeting with Wilson during the president’s nine-day visit home.
At Boston harbor, suffragists awaited the president’s arrival. Disappointed that the Senate had still not adopted the suffrage amendment and that some of them had been denied visas to follow the president to France, they waved derisive banners with renewed vigor and vitriol: “Mr. President, How Long Must Women Wait for Suffrage?” and “An Autocrat at Home Is a Poor Champion of Democracy Abroad.”
As the George Washington steered out of Boston harbor, its engines sputtered and roared as if venting the stress of its passengers from their days in America. The noise of frenzied schedules and weighty expectations would subside, for the moment, as the ship pushed ever so slowly out to sea, heaving its behemoth body onto the waves, adapting to the rhythms of the sea. On board, the pace of life would wind down and the process of breathing would seem to be tied to the pulsating sound of water splashing against the bow.